Ron Dellums

Ronald Vernie "Ron" Dellums (24 November 1934-30 July 2018) was a member of the US House of Representatives (D-CA 7) from 1971 to 1975 (succeeding Jeffery Cohelan and preceding George Miller), from CA 8 from 1975 to 1993 (succeeding Pete Stark and preceding Nancy Pelosi), and from CA 9 from 1993 to 1998 (succeeding Stark and preceding Barbara Lee). He also served as Mayor of Oakland from 8 January 2007 to 3 January 2011, succeeding Jerry Brown and preceding Jean Quan.

Biography
Ron Dellums was born in Oakland, California in 1934 to a family of labor organizers, and he worked as a psychiatric social worker and political activist in the African-American community during the 1960s, also serving in the US Marine Corps. From 1967 to 1970, he served in the Oakland City Council as a Democratic Party member, and he was then elected to the US House of Representatives in 1970. He was the first African-American to be elected to the US Congress from northern California and the first openly socialist successful non-incumbent congressional candidate since the end of World War II. His politics earned him a place on President Richard Nixon's "enemies list".

During his career in Congress, Dellums opposed the MX Missile project and opposed expansion of the B-2 stealth bomber program. In 1986, he introduced the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which was to impose sanctions against South Africa until apartheid was lifted. A Democratic-controlled House and Republican-controlled US Senate overrode President Ronald Reagan's veto, the first override of a presidential foreign policy veto in the 20th century. He left Congress in 1998, and went on to work as a legislative lobbyist before returning to politics as the Mayor of Oakland from 2007 to 2011. He called for hiring more police officers to deal with rising crime rates, and, in 2009, crime rates went down by 13%, more than Dellums expected. He decided against seeking re-election after being cited with failure to pay $239,000 in federal income taxes, and he died in 2018 at the age of 82.